LOS ANGELES — From the Twenties to ’60s, the Catskill Mountains, with its woody resorts and bungalows, had been a playground for middle-class Jewish households touring Upstate from New York Metropolis. Dads grilled whereas lounging moms shielded beehive hairdos from their youngsters’s poolside splashing, and dinners had been marked by heaps of bitter cream on plates of offal.
By the Nineteen Seventies, the glory days of the “Borscht Belt” — a derogatory nickname derived from the Russian soup that many Ashkenazi Jews favored — had light. Put up-World Warfare II, Jewish individuals discovered higher social acceptance, and will journey to trip locations by aircraft. The Borscht Belt could be decreased to postcards and Polaroids.
Marisa J. Futernick makes use of these mementos as fodder for fantasy in her solo exhibition Away within the Catskills: Summers, Bitter Cream, and Soiled Dancing on the Skirball Cultural Heart, reconstructing her grandmother’s holidays via household pictures, a video essay, and an set up. Having by no means been to the Catskills as a toddler, she makes use of the photographs and souvenirs as writing prompts, crafting fictional dialogue that playfully depicts Jewish-American leisure.
Set up view of Marisa J. Futernick, “Do the Swim” (left) and “Do the Hitch Hike” (proper) from the collection Soiled Dancing (2017), archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper
As such, Futernick employs a way theorist Saidiya Hartman calls “critical fabulation,” which goals to assist marginalized individuals reclaim their narrative from the colonial voices that largely wrote historical past, typically mischaracterizing, overlooking, or stereotyping disempowered topics. In Futernick’s dialogue, she will get to form a extra genuine illustration of Jewish tradition, and play a job in her household’s depiction sooner or later.
Within the picture collection Soiled Dancing (2017), which makes up the vast majority of the exhibition, Futernick blows up outdated slice-of-life pictures, like her then-teenage uncles posing on a diving board, and her grandmother wanting up from her Mah Jongg quartet. In “Do the Twist,” just under a photograph of a person mid-dive, floating above unbroken water, are two strains of dialogue on a easy white background: “‘The fish is dry.’ ‘But they give a good portion. I like a nice portion.’” There aren’t any attributions to the textual content, however one imagines they arrive from two ladies sitting on a white bench within the background. The easy alternate faucets into the highs and lows of budget-conscious journey, of a category that would afford a trip, however not luxurious.
Movie nonetheless of Marisa J. Futernick, “I Never Learned to Play Mah Jongg” (2025) (movie rating composed with Paul Huckerby)
Within the video essay “I Never Learned to Play Mah Jongg” (2025), Futernick juxtaposes the archives with present-day pictures of the Catskills. Now, the roads are lined with decaying buildings, and the small Jewish inhabitants within the space is predominantly Hasidic, a way more observant sect than the conservative Jews who vacationed there earlier. In a single half, Futernick exhibits snapshots of outdated deli commercials, mentioning that her household doused spaghetti with ketchup as a substitute of tomato sauce. The anecdote completely encapsulates the assimilated Jewish expertise: doing all one can to be seen as an American, however nonetheless not getting it fairly proper, remaining ostracized from the gentile majority.
The Mah Jongg set additionally reappears within the set up “Bam, Crack, Rock, Pop” (2025), an association of keepsakes on three floating cabinets. Close to it lies a small, pearl-beaded purse, from which Andes mints spill out. The green-foiled candies had been additionally a big a part of my childhood, and I had by no means thought-about them canonically Jewish till now. But it surely ought to’ve been no shock, as a result of my very own grandmother, who additionally spends her days kvetching over Mah Jongg together with her sisters, looks as if a carbon copy of Futernick’s bubbie.
Away within the Catskills is very private, but in addition common for its demographic. As youthful generations of Jewish individuals, like me, select a extra secular path, enclaves for Jewish Individuals disappear. Futernick’s archives and fictions are a useful script for preserving a fading tradition.
Marisa J. Futernick, “Bam, Crack, Rock, Pop” (2025), Instax pictures, stones, Andes candies, classic private objects (Mah Jongg set, homemaking schoolbook, night bag, memento slide viewer keychains from the Tamaraok Lodge and Brookside Lodge containing pictures of the artist’s grandparents, postcards from the Lifeless Sea and the Paramount and Harmony resorts, The Youngsters that includes Frankie Lymon 45-rpm vinyl document, Kodak Instamatic 150 digital camera)
Set up view of Marisa J. Futernick, “Do the Alligator” (left), “Do the Jerk” (heart), and “Do the Mashed Potato” (proper) from the collection Soiled Dancing (2017), archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper
Set up view of Away within the Catskills: Summers, Bitter Cream, and Soiled Dancing at Skirball Cultural Heart
Away within the Catskills: Summers, Bitter Cream, and Soiled Dancing continues at Skirball Cultural Heart (2701 North Sepulveda Boulevard, Los Angeles, California) via August 31. The exhibition was curated by Cate Thurston.
